Canon Pixma iP4920 Review

Introduction & Design

Take one of Canon's Pixma photo-centric all-in-one (AIO) printers, strip away the scanner bed and associated functions (scan and copy), remove the control panel and LCD, and what do you get? A no-frills, easy-to-use, single-function inkjet photo printer that produces near-photo-lab-quality photos and impressive-looking documents—without paying for a bunch of features you may not want or need. That's exactly what you'll find in Canon's $99.99 Pixma iP4920—a photograph printer built around Canon's exceptional five-ink ChromeLite100+ print system at an affordable price.

Granted, it's debatable whether a printer with so few features is worthy of a $99 sticker price, especially when you consider that you can buy an AIO—even some Canon models—for less. The Pixma iP4920 doesn't even support Wi-Fi for printing wirelessly, nor does it have an Ethernet port for making a wired connection to your home network. It does support automatic duplexing, though, allowing you to print two-sided pages unassisted. It also has a particularly useful feature uncommon to models in this price range: It prints on printable CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. However, the Pixma iP4920, as with some other Pixma models, is a little expensive to use. Its somewhat high cost of consumables may give you pause.

Design

This printer' s control panel consists of two buttons, Power and Resume/Cancel buttons located on the right-front—not much to figure out here.

The Pixma iP4920 looks like a smaller version of Canon's Pixma all-in-one printers, such as the $149.99 Pixma MG5320, which was released on the same day. But when you look closer, you'll see that the iP4920 has no control panel, aside from the power and resume/cancel buttons located on the right-front corner. Next to the buttons, you'll find a power status light and an alarm light that flashes orange when it's time to load paper, replace an ink cartridge, or clear a paper jam. On the bottom-right edge, beneath the status lights, is a PictBridge USB port. You can use it to print from PictBridge-compatible smartphones, tablets, and cameras. Aside from that, the Pixma iP4920 doesn’t support any memory cards or USB flash drives.

Weighing 12.6 pounds and measuring 6x17x11.7 inches (HWD), the Pixma iP4920 is small and light. It's also sturdy and well-built. Like its Canon AIO cousins, the outer case consists mostly of solid, high-gloss plastic. A peek inside reveals a rigid construction with lots of metal reinforcement. This little printer runs quietly without vibrating, which is a sign of good construction. We've seen cheaply constructed under-$100 printers that achieve this price point by skimping on durability, but we're pleased that the Pixma iP4920 is not one of them.

The Pixma iP4920 uses the same five-ink system—the standard cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) process colors and a black pigment for enhancing text quality—found in high-end Canon photo-centric printers. To replace them, you simply lift the front lid, push a tab to release the cartridge, and then slip in a new one. A red light on the cartridge tells you when it has seated properly. If you print a lot, you'll be replacing the cartridges often. Canon rates the color cartridges at only 540 prints, and the two black cartridges at lower than that.

The five ink cartridges slip into the easy to use carriage and the red lights indicate that cartridges are seated properly and in the right slots.

The Pixma iP4920 uses the same ink cartridges as several Pixma AIOs, making its per-page cost of consumables the same as those models. Compared with recent competitors we've reviewed, such as Kodak's $99.99 ESP 310 and the $149.99 ESP Office 2170 (both machines copy and scan), Pixma devices' cost per page run to the high side of average. Granted, both Kodak machines are more business-centric than the Pixma iP4920, but they also print good photographs. The two Kodak machines' cost per page for monochrome (black-and-white) prints is 3 cents per page, compared with the Pixma iP4920's 5.3 cents. Color prints on the Kodak machines run about 9.2 cents per page, compared with the Pixma iP4920's 12.3 cents. (Read more about how we calculate cost per page.)